Death and Rebirth

By John Snelling

Buddhism does not hold
with nihilistic views of death. There is no yawning abyss of pure
nothingness into which we finally disappear. There is just Samsara,
the cyclic world-process - and escape from it.

Buddhists are often thought to subscribe to the idea of reincarnation.
This is not strictly true. Reincarnation presupposes
that some kind of enduring soul or essence, something with
unchanging personal imprints, commutes from body to body down
through the marches of time. As we have seen, however, the Buddha
denied the existence of any soul that might reincarnate. What he did
admit of was something slightly different, which we might call
rebirth. This maintains that there, is a causal connection between
one
life and a subsequent one. Nothing is handed on in the transaction,
however; the following life is a
completely new one. But the form it takes is conditioned
by the previous one.

The odds in favour of a human rebirth, from where alone escape from
Samsara is possible, are said to be very slender. For example, If a
blind turtle swimming in a vast ocean came up for air once every 100
years, what would be the likelihood of it putting its head through
a golden yoke floating on the surface? So, if we are favoured with
a 'precious human rebirth', we should take care to put it to good use
in the interests of achieving liberation, otherwise we may be dispatched
to the other grim 'destinations'—the hell realms, the realm of the
hungry ghosts and so forth - and circulated there for aeons before
we get another chance.

The Bardo

In Tibetan Buddhism we find a detailed analysis of the states that
arise in the bardo, or intermediate state, that intervenes between
one life and another. The bardo is a terrifying phantasmagoria in
which all kinds of spectres, gods, demons and other apparitions loom
up before the bewildered disembodied consciousness traversing it.
Wonderful luminosities appear too, the first of which is the true
Dharmakaya wherein lies liberation, but the consciousness
traversing the bardo will usually be too confused to see them for
what they are and will instead be swept onwards towards rebirth,
which will take place within a maximum period of 49 days.

If a human rebirth is to take place, the future parents will be
seen making love, lust will arise and the consciousness will try
to interpose itself but find its way barred. The annoyance it then
feels will be the seal of its conception.

From Buddhsim: An Introductory uide to the Buddhist Tradition ,
by John Snelling (Element Books - 2000)